Grumbles in the Jungle

Tree frogs and tropical rainforests:

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Every now and again when we told someone about our trip we'd be greeted with a scornful "so you're going on a 2 year holiday then?" I think the time has come to set the record straight. Travelling is amazing, fun, exciting, sometimes relaxing, but it is definitely not a holiday. For one thing, we're spending quite a bit of time working pretty hard on various farms, but that aside there are still many aspects of our trip that would have most people, myself included, thinking fondly of their office desk and place in suburbia from time to time. Imagine you're several thousand miles away from home, in a country where noone around you except your travel companion speaks English. You're going to be that far away from home for the best part of 2 years, and for 99% of that time the only person you'll see who isn't a complete stranger will be said companion. Now imagine you have to carry everything you need for 12 months in a large bag on your back and that you no longer have a bedroom of your own, let alone a house. As a result, deciding where to sleep every night becomes a more difficult decision than what to wear each day. If you want to get through the trip without going bankrupt you'll need to do a fair bit of cooking, but to use a kitchen you'll need to squeeze in between a dozen other backpackers and their assorted pans and chopping boards. (Assuming, that is, your hostel has a kitchen and also assuming you can find anything recognisable to eat - I never thought I'd see the day I was pining for mushrooms...) A quiet night in front of the TV, once an entertainment option taken for granted, becomes an impossibility unless you want to share a sofa with 6 other people and watch reruns of Friends or the Simpsons all night. In Spanish. Of course, there are all the amazing places you've come travelling to see but let's not forget that to get to them you need to spend, on average, 5-10 hours every 3-4 days crammed onto various coaches, minivans and boats navigating mile after mile of the worst roads you can imagine or cowering in a speedboat piloted by a 12 year old praying his failure to crash headlong into other boats and riverbanks is due to his incredible skill and not an excessive dose of good luck. I could continue, but you get the picture.

The reason for this little tirade is that by the time we arrived in Costa Rica we were both starting to feel a little sorry for ourselves. Not that we weren't having a great time, but after a solid 3 months on the road in Mexico and Central America without any of the home comforts of the USA, Canada or in fact home, nerves were a little frayed. Things hit an all time low when we arrived in the frankly horrible town of Puntarenas after a long and sweaty bus journey and sat down to plan where we wanted to go next. We consulted the Lonely Planet and realised our options were (a) going to the beach, (b) going to the rainforest or (c) going to look at more volcanoes. Having just come from a rainforest covered volcanic island we were beginning to get a bit of a sense of deja vu and were definitely thinking of the old adage "too much of a good thing" with a new-found appreciation. The beach option was another day and 3 modes of transport away, so we hedged our bets between the rainforest and the volcano and set off for Monteverde.

After the distinctly developing world ambience of the past several weeks, arriving in Monteverde was something of a culture shock. The bus ride we took to get there was predictable enough - long, hot, dusty and involving our coach negotiating mountain passes that would be difficult for an alpine goat and stopping in the middle of nowhere at regular intervals to drop off aged passengers and their sacks of assorted vegetables. When we pulled into the village, however, it was as though we had taken a wrong turn and ended up in Switzerland. Suddenly there were streets with pavements lined with shops that had glass windows and automatic doors. There were Western outdoor stores selling hiking gear where previously there had been only Central American hardware stores and greengrocers'. Most bizarrely of all, there were other Westerners - and lots of them. Apart from the strange Twilight-Zone-esque contingent of Americans on one street in Granada and the Spanish School student population of Antigua, we had scarcely seen another person of non-Latin origin for several months. We spent our first evening bemoaning the commercialisaition of Costa Rica while secretly delighting in the availability of pizza and the English language.

Next morning, bright and early, we set out to explore the Monteverde cloud forest - home (we were reliably informed) to colourful tree frogs, howler monkeys, tarantulas and toucans. We were also reliably informed that the chances of actually seeing any of these creatures was slim to none unless you camped out for several days so we weren't too disappointed when the closest we got was hearing howler monkeys from across the jungle. It was still a pretty amazing place though, faithfully recreating the green, dripping vine covered landscape everyone had to draw at some point in their primary school education. We did see some funky giant beetles and a cute little coati and the soundtrack to the day was an excellently eerie mix of crazy birdcalls and howling monkeys. My biggest disappointment was not seeing any of the eponymous tree frogs, so to rectify this we paid a visit to the ranarium (frog zoo) next to our hostel. It turned out to be quite impressive. We went at dusk as many of the most exciting frogs were nocturnal, and spent a couple of happy hours spotting tiny multicoloured amphibians by torchlight.

Next stop was the town of La Fortuna and its imposing sentry Volcan Arenal. Still very much an active volcano, Arenal looms in the background everywhere you go in La Fortuna, ominously belching smoke and occasionally rumbling. Emboldened by our survival of the Pacaya ascent, we decided to take a night tour to see the famous volcanic eruptions. Unfortunately, the postcards that littered the windows of every shop in town depicting dramatic natural pyrotechnics proved to be either digitally altered, out of date or both. We did see a couple of showers of sparks spitting forth from the crater, as well as some narrow ribbons of orange light where the molten rocks bounced down the volcano's side, but it wasn't quite the awe-inspiring spectacle my camera and I had hoped for. The fact that I was disappointed that the volcano I was standing underneath wasn't violently erupting made me realise that perhaps my recent over-exposure to all things volcanic had tricked me into forgetting that they are, after all, fairly dangerous.